What Does Putin Want?

When considering the Ukraine, it is important to remember where this all started.  The now ousted President Yanukovych was running the country into the ground financially.  We now know he was also stealing vast amounts of wealth at the same time.  Putin rescued him because he wants The Ukraine to be a compliant state within the Russian orbit, as it has been for centuries.  He does not want it to be part of the EU or NATO, although I am not sure what value NATO has any more as I cannot imagine anyone wanting to have a war with Russia or they with us.  We still have Mutually Assured Destruction capacities so you would think we could all just agree to get along.  Which is why I am writing this blog.

Getting along means figuring out what Putin wants and then trying to figure out a way to negotiate freedom for those who want it in the Ukraine and servitude to Moscow for those who want it.  Sometimes borders must change to accommodate the wishes of those who live there, something most of the West wants for Tibet, but China does not and you would think China would be supporting the Ukraine on this point; but they are not.

As with so many things in politics, logic, consistency and truthfulness are severely lacking in autocratic style governments, no matter how they dress it up with elections.

Back to the main point.  The Ukrainian people ousted a corrupt and incompetent leader.  They did so through their legislative and constitutional processes which responded to the protests in the streets.  The protests may have created sufficient fear, but in the end it was not the people who forced Yanukovch to flee, it was a constitutional process.  They are going to have an election to replace him on a long term basis. 

But this is scary to Putin who doesn't seem to understand that no matter what happens in the Ukraine, Russia will still have it's military might and if the EU doesn't do something to diversify its energy, Russia will continue to have the EU over a barrel with its reliance on Gazprom natural gas.  Putin doesn't want NATO next door to Russia.

So it would seem to be fairly straight forward to help the Ukraine clean up its government, stabilize its finances, modify its borders, while getting Russia to support the idea of a Free Tibet.

But would that make Putin happy?  I don't think Putin can be a happy man.  In his heart, he is a power hungry bully who is playing a very long game.  He has robbed his preferred side in Ukrainian politics of 1mm voters by taking over Crimea.  Given the historic closeness of Ukrainian elections, this is not good for his preferred side, which is why some of the other "Russian" cities in the East, want to go over to Russia.  However, this will just decrease the natural support for a political party in the Ukraine that favors Russia relations over EU relations.  In more ways then one, Putin is pushing the Ukraine toward the West.

Putin should watch out for what he wishes.  Yanukovych didn't pay his Gazprom bill because he was too corrupt and used the money to keep his supporters happy.  Now Yanukovych supporters are unhappy, and want to be part of Russia.  I think they want their free lunch to continue.  So Putin is basically welcoming free loaders back into his energy subsidized free loading population.  That cannot be good for Russia's long term economic development, but it is pretty clear to me, long term economic development is not Putin's priority.

So I believe, Putin is on a path to becoming Russia's very own Yankovych, but it won't happen soon and I think that is what Putin fears.   In the meanwhile, I have no idea what Putin wants except some vague concept of putting the USSR back together again and that does not seem very democratic to me.  We will have to see which peoples believe that is a good idea and whether they are sufficient in number to prevent or accomplish that.  And the West needs to reduce its energy dependence on Russia, so we stop subsidizing this form of instability.  Putin is betting the West cannot achieve that.  Just as the Saudi's have bet that the Developed World cannot wean itself off of Islamic Oil and are content to continue to subsidize Islamic Terror.

You would think the GOP would support anything that reduces the price of oil, but they are so in the pocket of the energy industry, they cannot and are only left with spending money we don't have on military adventures aimed at supporting the energy industry (and our economy because without energy, we don't have our standard of living).